Quote from: Timelord2067 on Today at 10:34:54 AM

I feel handing out 50 merits in one lump is lazy and shouldn't be allowed to occur.

It depends on the post, which has to be really good for that amount. Or it depends on the user if someone needs 50 Merit to rank up, and has decent posts.
Both are okay with theymos:

Quote from: theymos on January 26, 2018, 06:06:49 PM

But undoubtedly some people got screwed by this, and if they have decent posts, by all means, give them the 250 or 500 merit that they need to rank-up.

Quote from: theymos on October 21, 2018, 02:28:55 PM

If they complain about amounts, tell them to complain to me. It's best if sources try to exhaust their source allocations, even if it means giving posts higher amounts than is typical. If you have 150 source merit and you only see 3 merit-worthy posts in a month, then I'd rather you over-give each of them 50 merit than let the merit expire. That way there are more people capable of sending merit, and the "merit economy" is less top-down.

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I also feel merit sources should be audited and should be unable to hand merits out to other merit sources

I'm pretty sure theymos keeps an eye on Merit sources once in a while, and if you have specific suspicious you can either post it in Meta, or tell theymos directly.

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or to like-minded gang-members.

What's wrong with thick-skinned gang members who like sarcasm?

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If you look at the higher end recipients of merits almost all of their merits are gifted to them in clumps from co-gang members.

As of last Friday:

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1. 6879 Merit received by theymos (#35) from 952 unique users in 2639 transactions
2. 5783 Merit received by LoyceV (#459836) from 626 unique users in 3195 transactions
3. 4616 Merit received by o_e_l_e_o (#1188543) from 425 unique users in 2595 transactions
4. 4430 Merit received by suchmoon (#234771) from 417 unique users in 2529 transactions
5. 4048 Merit received by DdmrDdmr (#1582324) from 399 unique users in 2175 transactions
6. 3901 Merit received by El duderino_ (#1067333) from 313 unique users in 2528 transactions
7. 3815 Merit received by fillippone (#1852120) from 314 unique users in 2230 transactions
8. 3461 Merit received by Last of the V8s (#479624) from 253 unique users in 2315 transactions
9. 3171 Merit received by gmaxwell (#11425) from 179 unique users in 1005 transactions
10. 2837 Merit received by mikeywith (#2033515) from 266 unique users in 1619 transactions

Even though I have no doubt that a large share of their Merit came from a small group, the above numbers show many different users value their posts. And it makes sense that the small group of users who has a lot of sMerit to give, also gives larger amounts.